


A Soul's Song

by jcherneson



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Season 3A
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-01-25 00:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1622264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jcherneson/pseuds/jcherneson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Nemeton has lured something old to Beacon Hill, leaving its guardians in disarray. But Stiles is the one who can best defend against it, and Derek returns from South America to make sure he's got the chance to do just that. But at what price victory?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On the Run

**Author's Note:**

> My first fanfic, but not my first writing. Hope to give back a little bit of the enjoyment I've gotten reading here.
> 
> Please don't hesitate to let me know if I've mislabeled anything. Sterek is, as they say, endgame.

Stiles wrenched the wheel on his Jeep sharply to the left. With the swerve-and-lurch his baby gave on the wet midnight streets, he gritted his teeth, eyes wide, sure that he’d just managed to tip it over. But the Jeep gripped the slick asphalt, and skidded into the rough gravel parking lot at the edge of Beacon Hills. He got as near as he could to the big, industrial concrete building that lay on the other end of the parking lot and stamped on the brakes. He was opening the door before she’d finished skidding to a halt. He yanked the keys out of the ignition, and fumbled with his seatbelt for a moment as the lights of the car following him turned into the parking lot, close behind.  
  
Crap. He’d hoped he’d had a little better of a head start. Well, he’d have to make every bit count, he thought, as he stumble-ran away all flailing limbs and gawky frame from his Jeep into the large steel doors of the sewage treatment facility. Thankfully, the doors were open, and he didn’t trip on the wet, tiny gravel that made up the approach to the entrance (though just barely). As he slammed the doors behind him, Stiles caught a glimpse of his father’s patrol car slamming to a stop, spraying gravel over his Jeep. The doors all popped open, and figures came pouring out of the vehicle in hot pursuit.  
  
“Stiles! Son!” his father shouted, standing half out of the still-running car. “Don’t do this! We’re just worried for you, damn it! Stiles!”  
  
“We’ve got this,” Scott growled, his voice full of irritation at the necessity of all of this mess. He glanced at the Sheriff. “You stay here and make sure he doesn’t sneak back out to his Jeep while we’re in there.” The older man sighed, and nodded. Scott turned to the other two figures who’d clambered out of the back seat of the cruiser.  
  
“Isaac. Allison. Let’s go.” Scott’s eyes gleamed the color of blood, and his features shifted, and Isaac answered his transformation with his own golden-eyed one. Allison’s eyes played over the building’s exterior, studying it, examining it as she strung her bow. The trio stalked to the building’s entrance and slipped inside, using the very same door Stiles had just slammed behind them.  
  
Inside, the two wolves nearly gagged, and Isaac faltered, crouching defensively with his hands over his ears. The facility was largely automated, allowing its mechanisms to run day and night, filtering the disgusting contents of sewage from the water that carried it before sending it all on to whatever the next stage in that process was. The machinery was loud, so loud that both Scott and Isaac were forced to concentrate to shut it out, and the noxious fumes of the plant’s processing nearly overwhelmed them.  
  
“Smart,” Allison said with a nod, looking around her. She looked aggravated, but also a little impressed. Scott shot her a glance and she gestured around them. “He’s brought us to one of the few places where your heightened senses are not only negated, but turned against you. There’s no way you’ll be able to track him by scent in this place, or hear his movements at all. I almost wish I’d thought of it.”  
  
Scott scowled at her. “Can we be impressed with his werewolf hunting tactics later, and just find him?” She shrugged, and smiled.  
  
“He could be anywhere in here,” Isaac said, looking around warily. “If we can’t track him by sound or smell, it’s going to be really hard to find him.”  
  
“We should call for backup,” Allison said, stringing an arrow and resting its feathered end lightly in her right hand. “My dad is waiting by the phone for our call.”  
  
“No, we can do this. I don’t want to fail our Lady, Allison. Let’s see if we can fix this ourselves, without involving anyone else. We’re going to have to spread out. Any one of us is still a match for him by ourselves. Just don’t hurt him unless it’s really, really necessary. Got it?” Isaac and Allison glanced at one another, and nodded to Scott. With that, the three each chose a separate direction to go in. Scott took the left, and Isaac took the right, each of them slipping into the shadows and padding on stealthy tread. For herself, Allison looked up at the industrial catwalks above their heads, and found the nearest ladder up to them. At the base of the ladder, she reached into her bag, donned a pair of night vision goggles, and began her climb.  
  
The catwalk was an old metal construction, and the heels of her boots clanged against it as she reached her perch. From her vantage, she scanned the interior of the cavernous facility. Normally, she’d just talk to the werewolves she was hunting with, knowing that their hearing would let them hear her, but again the noise of the facility prevented them from using those enhanced senses. She had to grudgingly admit Stiles’ cleverness in running here. But really, to what purpose? What was he going to…  
  
There he was. Just ahead of Isaac, but it looked like the curly-headed werewolf was going to miss him. Allison notched an arrow, pulled and released, sending the shaft winging across the dark space of the plant. It landed three paces ahead of Isaac’s path and he stutter-stepped away from it in alarm. He swung his gaze upward, seeking the threat, eyes all gold with the threat of violence. He spotted her and looked confused for a moment, allowing her to point out the direction Stiles was waiting. He grinned a lupine grin, all fang, and corrected his path.  
  
Looking around, Allison found Scott. Neither of them were particularly stealthy, but Scott was making a better attempt than Lahey had. With another arrow, she grabbed his attention, and pointed him in the right direction. He flashed her a thumbs up, snatched up the arrow (good, she thought - she’d have to make sure to recover the one she sent in Isaac’s direction) and moved on quick tread towards the other side of the plant.  
  
“I’m very sorry, my dear.” Allison whirled and found the calm visage of Deaton, mere feet away from her. Before she could respond with anything but a gasp, he raised an open palm and puffed his breath at her, sending a small cloud of some sort of powder at her. She coughed once, and her nerveless hands dropped her weapon. She coughed a second time, and her legs gave out from under her. She toppled over, slamming her shoulder and upper arm into the railing of the catwalk, and then slid bonelessly to the grated surface of the catwalk, rapidly unconscious.  
  
Deaton looked down at the floor below them, and turned back towards the stairs, praying that Stiles remembered his part in all of this.  
  
Down below, Isaac rounded a corner. Despite the horrible stench of the effluvia in the tanks and channels around them, he caught a fleeting hint of Stiles’ scent. He had to be near…and so he was. He stood at a dead end, trapped with the wall of the plant to his back, and tall tanks up on metal frames to either side. When he saw Isaac, he raised his hands, and Isaac’s wolf practically slavered at the slight tremble in his hands.  
  
“Uh, Isaac. C’mon, man. You’ve got to snap out of it. I know you guys don’t want to do this. She’s messing with your heads, and…”  
  
“Hold still, Stiles,” Isaac said, watching the thin teen carefully. He was tricky, and Isaac approached him slowly and warily, refusing to take his eyes off him. “Just come back with us. Don’t fight. Your dad’s waiting outside, and Scott misses you.” He took another step forward.  
  
His wolf responded to Stiles’ sudden action with a slight lurch, more surprise than fear, but that was all it took. He’d been so focused on the gangly youth’s hands, raised up near his face, that he’d neglected to pay any attention to his feet.  
  
With a grunt, Stiles stomped down on the thin glass bottle at his feet, and touched that spark that Deaton taught him how to find. The powdered mountain ash in it slipped with a small hissing sound towards the rest of the mountain ash that lay in a semi-circle on the floor around Isaac. Like metal filings drawn toward one another, the mountain ash slammed into a perfect circle around the boy. He realized too late what was happening and leapt, only to slam into the spiritual presence of the ward he was now trapped in.  
  
Isaac’s eyes glowed like molten gold and how roar-howled his fury, slamming fists into the barrier over and again.  
  
Stiles grinned, flashed the werewolf a quick wave, and then ducked under one of the tank-bases to his right, scrambling through the interlocking supports carefully. He emerged on the other side, in a somewhat more open area, and glanced around cautiously. No sign of Allison or Scott, but no sign of Deaton, either.  
  
He’d been lucky. When that creature came to the town, Deaton had sensed it. She’d gone after him first, of course - Deaton worked the old magics, the kind of magics that were part and parcel of the world she came from, and so he was the largest threat. The druid was subtle, though, and knew how to read the kinds of omens that warned him of her impending hunt, and he’d vanished without a trace.  
  
After that, she hunted down the three guardians of the Nemeton, those three who had a soul-deep connection to it. Allison she’d taken first, and Isaac and Mr. Argent with her. Scott was next, that night he and Stile had been searching for clues to Deaton’s disappearance at the vet clinic. Allison, Isaac and Mr. Argent had showed up suddenly and violently, although the hunters were using tranq rounds. Scott pushed Stiles towards the back room, trying to get him some breathing space to get the hell out of there. He’d been working at wedging one of the windows open when she’d just appeared from out of nowhere. She was breath-stoppingly beautiful, in her mantle of raven’s feathers, with her long black dreadlocks and deep black eyes. She’d whispered to Stiles in a wordless sussurus that he felt more than heard, touching him just under his collarbone with one long taloned finger, and when he stopped stock still in terror, she simply smiled and walked away.  
  
From her expression, he was pretty sure she’d thought something had happened. That she’d done something to him, but he didn’t feel any different. Cautiously, fearfully, he’d followed her, to find Scott being held down, kneeling in the center of the clinic waiting room. Stiles noted that she breezed past the mountain ash wards, and stepped up to Scott, reaching down to touch him as she had him.  
  
Stiles knew Scott. He knew him well, and he’d known him for a long time. So when Scott’s expression turned from one of pain and anger to that of a simpering, adoring puppy, he knew something was going on. None of them paid much attention to him, though, as he got closer to the front door, until Mr. Argent called his name.  
  
“Stiles,” he said, while the strange woman whispered to Scott. “Go and pull the van around to the front door. There’s some things our Lady wants to take from here.” He threw Stiles a keychain, which Stiles nearly dropped. Looking up, he was afraid his clumsiness might give something away - might reveal him for not quite as controlled as they seemed to think he was. But no, Argent had already turned back to listen to this woman, joining Scott, Allison and Isaac in gazing at her adoringly.  
  
“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, heading for the front door. Everything in his instincts told him to flee as fast as he could, but they all seemed to think he was on their side, so he made sure to do nothing to dispel that. Just outside the door, he’d carefully climbed into his Jeep, put it in neutral, silently pushed it out of the parking lot into the abandoned street and then hopped in, starting it and driving as quickly as he could away from them. For good measure, he tossed the keys to their transportation up under his seat, which was as good as bucking it into the ocean, as far as he was concerned.  
  
A growl from above snapped him out of it, but too late. With a fearful glance upward, Stiles toppled over as the red-eyed predator that was his best friend in the world leapt down on top of him, bearing him to the ground. Stiles shrieked as Scott squatted on top of him, snatching up the lapels of the flannel shirt he wore and slammed him once, then again, into the cement floor.  
  
Scott glanced up just as a bottle of mountain ash came sailing at the out of the darkness, and shattered near his head. Both of them flinched, and that was enough time for the powder to snap into the shape of a circle around them. Scott leapt off of Stiles, slamming into the barrier, howling his fury at the figure of Deaton, who stepped out of the shadows. Freed to move again, Stiles leapt for the opposite edge of the circle, stumbling to his feet and tumbling over the line, praying that he didn’t do anything to smudge that line. He rolled once and then came up on one knee in time to see Scott slam into the edge of the mountain ash circle closest to him, too late to keep his prey from escaping.  
  
“Jesus! Cutting it a little close, weren’t you?”  
  
“We don’t have much time, Stiles. I think that…” the older man began, and then Stiles watched in horror as the shadows _unfolded_ behind him in a burst of black feathers, and suddenly _she was there_.  
  
“No, druid,” she said, in her heavy lilting accent. Deaton whirled, raising his hand, a word on his lips, but she was faster, and she drove one of those raven-talons past his guard to touch his chest. “You are _out_ of time.”  
  
Deaton fell to his knees, a gasping sob escaping his lips, and Stiles ran. He ran for all he was worth. He careened through the plant, rebounding off of machinery here and there, ducking (sometimes not in time) to avoid hitting his head on the seemingly endless obstacles at head-height, until he found the door.  
  
He burst through it, surprising his dad.  
  
“Stiles!” The Sheriff straightened from where he was leaning against the hood of his car, but Stiles was already running for his Jeep. The older man slipped a little in the wet gravel, and that was all the time Stiles needed. His Jeep roared to life ( _thank you_ , he nearly sobbed), and he tore out of the parking lot in a spray of rain-slick pebbles.  
  
“Fuck!” He slammed the pad of his open palm into the steering wheel, and tried to blink back tears. Now what?  
  



	2. The Last Place They’d Look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles seeks a hiding place from which to regroup and figure out his next move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos. Unbeta'd.

It was less than an hour before dawn by the time Stiles pushed open the door to Deaton’s vet clinic. He wedged one foot inside to hold the door open and then carefully pulled the bicycle into the lobby without turning on the lights inside. Hurredly, he leans Scott’s bike against the wall there, glancing out the windows of the door to see if he was followed. He’s pretty sure he wasn’t.   
  
His first stop had been Scott’s house, to nab the bike he hadn’t used since getting his motorcycle. Throwing it in the back of his Jeep, he quickly drove to the school parking lot and left his Jeep there - it was too hard to hide effectively, and was the most useful way of tracking him, especially if his Dad was helping to hunt for him. He’d have the resources of the Sheriff’s Department, and if he had that, then it meant that she had it as well.  
  
Satisfied with his search, he pulled down the shade over the door, flipping the sign to CLOSED and making sure it was locked. He crept carefully to the back of the clinic, using his phone to illuminate his way. He checked all the rooms, his heart pounding in his chest, to make sure that he was alone. Since all of this began, Deaton had sent all the animals in his clinic home, or to other clinics, for which Stiles was grateful. The thought of Deaton being taken and no one being left to take care of those animals? Not cool.  
  
Gingerly, he found his way into Deaton’s office. Thankfully, it was unlocked. He knew that the lady with the raven feathers kept her newest toys close to her for the first twenty-four hours. Deaton had said it was part of the “imprinting” she used to compel people to obey her. With any luck, she wouldn’t think to send anyone around to his clinic until then, and by then, Stiles would be out. It was a risk, but he needed a place to hang out during the day, to keep out of sight.  
  
Plus, he intended to ransack Deaton’s office library and stores here, and see what kinds of things he had tucked away that might be of use. He was pretty sure that he could probably manage the research necessary to figure out how to use some of it, but honestly? He was just scared.   
  
Stiles slid down the wall behind Deaton’s desk, shutting off his phone’s light. The knot he’d been doing his best to ignore churned up out of his belly and into his throat, and he allowed himself a strangled sob.   
  
But just one, damn it. Exhaling loudly, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, clearing the tears from his face before looking around. The truth was, he was terrified, and he had no idea what to do next. He kind of needed to feel like he was accomplishing something, though - it was pretty clear that if he just sat around, he was going to be a fear- and grief-induced wreck, and he couldn’t risk that kind of thing.   
  
People he loved were counting on him to keep his shit together. He stood quickly, and looked around the room. In the span of about twenty minutes, he’d gathered a bunch of books and likely-looking jars (some marked with symbols of various kinds). He crossed into the back office, and found the refrigerator. Fortunately, Deaton tended to half live out of his office, so there were some leftovers to be found there that weren’t too terribly old, and Stiles grabbed those, along with a bottle of water from one of the cabinets. Finally, he found a closet where towels, blankets and the like were stored, and grabbed and armful of them, sufficient to make himself a nest back behind the desk in Deaton’s office.  
  
By this time, the light outside was sufficient to allow him to see without the use of his phone. He sat down, picked up a book, staring at it for what had to be less than a minute before resolutely closing it again. He just couldn’t. He opened the container of what looked like it used to be arroz con pollo (or maybe enchiladas? Something red…) and nibbled at it a bit. By habit, he clicked open his phone and checked his messages before thumbing it off and dropping it next to him in irritation. Who the hell was going to message him?  
  
The ringing of the phone snapped him awake again. He wasn’t sure when he’d dropped off, but the light was much stronger in here now. He glanced hurriedly at his own phone, but no - that wasn’t his phone ringing. It was Deaton’s office phone, the old one that actually still rang. The answering machine next to it ( _Jesus, Deaton - an answering machine?_ ) clicked over, and Deaton’s voice tinnily apologized for not being there, asking the caller to leave a message.  
  
“Deaton,” the gruff voice said over a bad connection. “It’s Derek.”  
  
Stiles scrambled suddenly, bursting into action. Leftovers flew in a nasty red arc, spattering his blanket nest, as Stiles practically threw himself at the phone. He picked up the receiver, and mashed buttons on the answering machine to make it give him control again.  
  
“Derek? Derek!”  
  
There was a pause in which Stiles was terrified that he’d managed to hangup on the line.  
  
“Stiles?” Derek asked incredulously.  
  
“Oh, thank God!” Stiles slid into Deaton’s seat, shoving it away from the desk. “I…I didn’t know who to contact, Derek. I didn’t have anyone to…”  
  
“Stiles, what’s going on?” The werewolf’s gravely voice punched in over his panic. The one thing about Derek’s anger - it always sounded like such a controlled anger. Like, he was a life-long werewolf, and even when he was super pissed, it always kinda sounded like it was a harnessed rage, and Stiles let himself drink in some of that self-control. He took a deep breath.  
  
“Deaton’s gone, Derek. And so is everyone else. She took them and like…brainwashed them, Derek.”  
  
“Stiles, tell me what’s going on from the beginning.” Stiles broke a little, then. He was so relieved to have someone he could tell these problems to, someone he could depend on to come and help fix everything. He hadn’t meant to sob into the phone like that.  
  
“It’s going to be alright, Stiles, okay? You hear me? Just tell me what’s happened.”  
  
“Deaton says that she was lured here by the power of the Nemeton, like he warned us things would be. She’s…I’m not sure. He didn’t have a name for it. Or actually, he kinda had too many names. He said they were where the medieval world got its stories of the succubus from, and that in Ireland they were called something like leenawn-shee.”  
  
“ _Leanansidhe_?”  
  
“That’s it, yeah! He says that they feed off of…well, sex, right? But that they also do this thing where they can control people.”  
  
“What kind of control?”  
  
“Deaton says that it’s about love. Or lust. Whatever. She reaches into them, and takes the feelings the person felt associated with the lovemaking of their past, and sorta…transferred it to her? So like, Scott is mooning over her the way he used to with Allison, and my dad is…” He couldn’t finish that thought.  
  
“She’s got your dad?” Stiles could only make an affirmative-sounding squeak in the phone.  
  
“Yeah. She couldn’t control me, though. Turns out, for once, me being a virgin actually works in my favor. She can only grab the emotions that come from having had sex and use those, and I…just don’t have any of those.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean you’re safe, Stiles. If you aren’t someone she can dominate, she’ll feed on you. You have to get out of there. Like, leave town entirely.”  
  
“I can’t leave everyone here for her to…to use, Derek! Scott, my dad, Allison, Lydia - none of them would give up on me, if things were reversed. I can’t just…abandon them. What do I do?” Stiles finally asked, and waited.  
  
For too long.  
  
“Derek?” he asked again, tentatively. “Are you…Derek?”  
  
Fuck. The line was _dead_. And that’s when he heard the distinctive thud-click of the front door being closed and locked again. In no time, Scott’s silhouette blackened the doorway to Deaton’s office. He leaned against the doorway, smiling that puppy dog Scott-smile, made sinister in the half-light. Stiles stood, casting about for something that he could use as a weapon. Anything, damn it.  
  
“Stiles, don’t. Just _stop_ , man. Who were you talking to on the phone?” Scott’s voice was light. Friendly, with a little of his old banter, the kind that was just between the two of them.  
  
Just hearing it made Stiles want to cry. “I’m not going with you.”  
  
Scott just smiled. “Dude…you’re not not going with me. Please, Stiles. You’re my best friend. Don’t make me hurt you, okay? Your dad is waiting outside, and he wants to make sure you’re okay. We all do.”  
  
Stiles just sagged against the desk. He was so tired.  
  
“You know what she’s going to do to me, right, Scott? She’ll feed on me, man. She can’t control me the way she does you.”  
  
Stiles couldn’t tell if the look of sadness and concern that came over Scott’s face was genuine. It looked genuine, damn it. “Dude,” he said, a voice full of concern. “She just wants us to love her, Stiles. That’s all. Come and meet her - really meet her. She’s easy to love.”  
  
“You can’t get in here,” Stiles said finally. “I know that if you could, you’d have already been in here.”  
  
Scott sighed, the sound of someone at wit’s end with someone they care about. He glanced sideways, at the thin line of mountain ash worked into the center of the door frame, and shook his head. He spun on his heel, stepping out of the doorway, and for just a moment, Stiles allowed himself to feel a moment of hope.  
  
Then Allison Argent stepped into the doorway, and that hope curdled in his belly, replaced with nausea.


	3. In the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles is a prisoner without light and without hope.

His eyelids fluttered open, and he’d have groaned if his mouth weren’t so dry. Dimly, Stiles was aware that he ought to be doing…something. But it was so hard to remember. So hard to think at all, and it just seemed kinder to himself to let his eyelids flutter closed again, and to try and recapture the unconsciousness.  
  
But it refused to come.   
  
It felt like there was a tangled knot in his chest, and it made it hard to breathe. It was terribly familiar, but he didn’t have a name for it, and it tightened in his breast, strangling him, until he shot bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath. Then, when it felt like it might kill him, crushing his innards like some great fist, it released like the thrumming of a bowstring.  
  
The tears came then, and he wished he could be dead.  
  
He didn’t know how long he rested like that. He didn’t remember leaning to the side, pressing his face (it felt so _bruised_ ) up against the cold cinder block wall next to the cot he lay on. He wept, his eyes closed tightly as though he could make it all real just by not seeing any of it. He cried until his throat was raw, and his eyes swollen and gritty. He ran a hand through his hair, which was matted and greasy from too long without a shower.  
  
Sniffling, he took a deep, shuddering breath, and then another, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, pressing inward on his sore sockets as much as he was wiping away the tears. For a few moments, he gave himself the luxury of that despair, the kind of hopelessness that allowed even someone like Stiles to just do nothing.  
  
Then, he took a third deep breath, held it for a moment, and opened his eyes.  
  
It was hard to remember how many times he’d done this. A watery grey twilight spilled into the room from high up on the wall. He knew he was in a basement of some kind (damn it, why was it always freaking basements and cellars these days?). Thought it was largely empty, the room had clearly once held boxes or furniture or something, judging from the marks on the floor. The place was dirty, with the accumulated grime of a subterranean room that people preferred to just put things in and forget. A rickety-looking staircase climbed one wall to a door on the landing above it.  
  
The only thing in the room was the cot he was curled up on, half-swaddled in old, rough packing blankets like the kind moving or storage companies sold to wrap furniture in: harsh, and coarse. Suddenly their texture was too much to bear, and he pushed them off of him, kicking half-frantically to get free, despite his nakedness underneath. The cold, still air made him feel like he could breathe again.  
  
A click at the top of the stairs snapped his attention upward, and then harsh electrical light flooded the room. Frantic, he snatched up the covers and hauled them back over him while he scrambled to put his back in the wall corner. He tried not to cower, to be brave, but the knot in his chest was back, as sudden as a trap springing closed, and it was everything he could do not to cry out. Instead, he drew his knees up beneath his chin, and hid his face in the blankets that pooled there.  
  
Shoed feet descended the wooden steps, stopping at the bottom of the staircase.  
  
“Hey, buddy.” Scott’s voice was quiet, the voice he used to talk to fearful wounded animals at the vet. Stiles looked up shakily, his eyes hooded in fear. Scott smiled at him disarmingly, those dimples flashing. Stiles knew it was supposed to be a comforting gesture, drawing on their friendship. But seeing that smile, with him here in these circumstances? Stiles lowered his head to the blankets again and sobbed.  
  
“Hey, hey.” Scott tried to console him. Stiles was dimly aware of him crossing the cold basement floor, and setting something in his hands down on the ground next to the cot. The cot squeaked in protest as Scott sat on the edge and reached out to touch Stiles’ shoulder. “It’s okay, buddy. I’m here. It’s all okay.”  
  
“Get away from me!” With a snarl, Stiles _shoved_ , and Scott went sprawling backwards off the cot.   
  
Scott’s head hit the cement floor with an ugly, meaty sound. Stiles’ sudden lurch forward also managed to stumble himself half-off the cot, his hands knocking aside the paper-wrapped sandwich and bottle of water on the ground next to them. Clumsy and ungainly as always, but he recovered quickly, and was on his feet almost immediately. He skipped around a groaning Scott, careful to remain out of arms’ reach, and then raced for the stairs.  
  
Unfortunately, Scott was still a freaking werewolf, and recovered quickly. While Stiles pounded up the rough, splintery stairs, Scott rose and leapt up the side of the staircase itself. His leap didn’t carry him high enough to actually get onto the stairs themselves and block Stiles’ flight, but it was enough to allow him to reach through the railing and swipe at Stiles’ legs. The boy’s unshod foot scraped against the steps as Scott tripped him, and he tumbled backward with a gasping wail, all flailing limbs.  
  
He had no time to recover before a red-eyed Scott snatched him up from the base of the staircase and manhandled him back to the cot, slamming him into it with such force that the cheap aluminum struts buckled beneath him, breaking part of it.  
  
“Stay _down_!” he roared as only an Alpha werewolf could. It did something to the lizard-brain, that roar, and Stiles was pretty sure that if his body was working normally, he’d have pissed himself. As it was, he curled in on himself, biting his lip bloody in terror, trying to make himself as small and obedient as possible.  
  
“That is enough,” her voice said suddenly in their midst, and Stiles’ stomach bottomed out. Scott’s roar created in him a terrible animal terror. Her simple whisper created in him a fear that was much, much worse, the kind of cold creeping-across-the-spine terror that he didn’t have a name for. The Alpha-voice filled him with an animal fear; _her_ voice filled him with primordial terror.  
  
“Go back upstairs,” she said, and Scott gulped and whined low, like a scolded puppy. Stiles raised his head then, and watched as Scott slowly backed away. Not in fear - God, that might have made him feel somewhat better, in some way. No, Scott had forgotten that Stiles existed at all, and couldn’t take his eyes off of her as he backed away, anxious to show her how obedient he was, and begging for some simple acknowledgement.  
  
Taking a breath, he let his gaze slide across to her, fighting the impulse that sparked in his brain to avoid looking, to turn away, to never meet the eyes of death because that’s how it noticed you back. She paid no heed to Scott whatsoever, and instead regarded Stiles with a bemused expression, like she found him unfathomable and eternally interesting.  
  
She turned away from him just long enough to look up the staircase, where Scott had stalled in his flight, looking like he was torn between leaving and rushing back down to her side. She arched an eyebrow, and that was all it took. He bowed his head like a scolded child, and fled the basement.  
  
“You…you sure got him on…on a leash,” Stiles quipped, spitting a bit of blood on the floor, refusing to look away from her fey gaze. She smiled charmingly.  
  
“You are such a refreshing creature. Moments ago you were in the grip of despair so black and consuming I could feel it from the topmost floor of this house. You’ve just been brutalized by your closest friend - not the first time, as I’m sure you can dimly recall - and yet seeing his obedience to me only fills you with anger.”  
  
“More like _contempt_ ,” Stiles spat, and pulled the blankets back over himself with just a hint of self-consciousness. He fidgeted with them, arranging and re-arranging them, tucking here and shifting them there before he looked up at her with the sharpest gaze he could muster. “We’ve faced a crazed burn-victim werewolf, a whole freaking pack of evil-ass Alphas, a murder-lizard and a Freddy-Kruger-faced druid bitch from _Hell_ , and they were all stone-cold _killers_. You? You’re basically just a super-MILF. Not impressed. You don't even rate.”  
  
He hated how her delighted laughter did something to him to him, sparking a weird longing in him to just…do it again. To make her laugh again, to make her notice him and take delight in it. Reaching under the covers, he shoved a thumb into one of his brand-new injuries from his tumble with Scott, and let the pain that blossomed in his ribs distract him from that urge.  
  
Pain, and anger. It’s all he had right now.  
  
“I have seen men like you before,” she whispered, closing the gap between them. Her long dreadlocks swayed behind her as she moved, and her hands smoothed down the dark black garment she wore. On any living, mortal woman it might have been an unconscious fidget, Stiles thought. But not on her. Every motion was deliberate, he knew, ever intended to influence those who watched her.  
  
“Your power doesn’t work on me,” he said finally, and raised his gaze to where she stood over his bed, a vision in midnight colors. For all his bravado, though, he couldn’t bear to look into her eyes, because something in his breast quailed at what he knew he’d find there. She sat suddenly, gracefully perching on the edge of the cot, and Stiles couldn’t help it - he pushed himself further into the corner with a whimper.  
  
“Not that one, perhaps, dear boy. Sweet little innocent, such a morsel you make.” She reached out and ran a single taloned finger across his jaw line. “There is power in your purity, you know. Sweet, sweet power.”  
  
“Purity?” Stiles snorted, a reaction they both knew was sheerest bravado. “You clearly don’t know me so well.”  
  
“I would like to, though,” she whispered with a low, smoky voice, and Stiles couldn’t help it. “I know you do not remember, but we have done this already, you and I. In the span of the several nights you’ve been here, sweet child.”  
  
Stiles swallowed. There it was. It was the center of the Gordian knot in his breast, the source of the panic and fear and sheerest horror that coiled inside him, tearing at him every moment he was conscious. He knew what she said was true; they’d done this before, and he screamed at the memory as she lunged at him all pale flesh and black talons, and drank deeply of his life’s essence.  
  
She fed, and continued to feed even after he stopped screaming, and slipped into blissful, kind unconsciousness once again.


	4. A Heart of Shattered Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Chanteuse's plans come to fruition...

The landscape of the Beacon Hills Preserve was dark, with no moon in the sky to illume it. The moon was new, and its absence cast a sinister pall over the already-grim woodland preserve. And in that darkness, wicked things were afoot.  
  
As the small group walked through the woods, a wordless song surrounded them. It was how they knew that their Lady was with them, though they could not see her in her mantle of ravens’ feathers. Scott and the Sheriff walked at the center of the group, each with a hand on one of Stiles’ arms, his hands cuffed in front of him. The young man was pale and wan, and barely managed to keep his feet under him, stumbling constantly in the dark. Scott kept having to snatch him up by his arm to keep him from tripping over rocks, gnarled roots and rough patches of ground.  
  
Idly, Stiles wondered how it was that he was all but blind and stumbling around, but his dad seemed to be able to pick his way through the dark woods just fine, as did Allison, her dad and Lydia. This was the first time in…well, he didn’t really know how many days. It was the first time since he’d been taken that he’d seen anyone other than Scott, his dad or the Lady.  
  
No, the Chanteuse, he dimly remembered her calling herself, that one time. The first time she’d…fed from him, he hadn’t totally lost consciousness. He lay almost paralyzed afterwards, and she’d laid beside him, covering both of them in her mantle of feathers and soft black doeskin, and she’d sung to him. It was the same kind of song that was around them as they walked, but it’d felt like she was singing just for him. It brought up every song that had ever been important to him: the birthdays as a kid where Scott did his best to sing “Happy Birthday” to him louder than anyone else. His mom’s favorite song, which she always put on the car stereo when he went shopping with her on Sunday mornings, before they stopped to get “secret ice cream” as a reward for them having braved the shopping. That one kinda whiny song he’d listened to on repeat when he realized that not only was he in love with Lydia, but she didn’t know - didn’t want to know, really - that he existed. The music he’d put on his headphones while he lay in bed in the weeks after his mom died, trying to drown out the insanity of the world outside of his room, and the terrible turmoil roiling inside him at the thought of never being hugged or kissed by the one person he could always count on to understand him and find his weirdness to be not just endurable, but a reason to love him.  
  
She’d sung a song that was all those songs, and those emotions all bubbled to the surface, churning in his mind until he thought he’d go crazy not just from their intensity but from the impossibility of having to experience them all at once. He’d lapsed into merciful unconsciousness before she finished the song, and he suspected it was in fear of repeating that experience that he’d passed out whenever she fed from him still, inhaling when he’d exhaled, her firm body shivering in ecstasy up against him as he got colder and colder.  
  
“Please,” he finally said, stumbling for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I…I need to stop for a minute. I’m so…just, tired.”  
  
His dad just looked at him, nodding, but it was Scott who spoke up. “Sorry, bud. We need to keep going. We’re almost there, man.” His words were kindly - the warmth that he associated with Scott - but the hand on his harm was hard like iron and propelled him implacably forward.  
  
He had to admit that part of his reason for constantly stumbling were the tears that blurred his vision.  
  
Finally, they arrived. Stiles didn’t need to look up to see where they’d come - he’d known. He knew deep down in his bones, he’d felt it like the thrum of electricity in a power cable. He could always feel it, in the back of his mind, ever since they’d taken the ice bath in Deaton’s clinic as a last ditch effort to stop the Darach. He, Scott and Allison had been symbolic sacrifices, then, and immersed themselves in the Telluric current without any clear idea of what they might do to themselves by doing so.  
  
The Nemeton.  
  
The sacred site, a wellspring of power for those who knew how to tap into it. The old earthen wisdoms knew how to do so, and the Chanteuse didn’t simply possess those wisdoms - she was part of them. A creature of powers long forgotten by most, she breathed in the Telluric currents as others breathed air. They sustained her, empowered her, fed her.  
  
“For a very long time I have sought a Nemeton of this power,” she whispered, congealing out of the shadows. Though she didn’t speak to any of those gathered here, all save Stiles held their breaths, leaning into hang on her every word. “Most of the old holy sites in the world are gone. Dead, as this one was. Rare are those who know how to re-awaken them.”  
  
She strode forward, her motion languid and she stepped up to the edges of the great severed trunk.  
  
“But one such came here, did she not? Reawakened it, seeking to harness its power to protect herself against those who betrayed her? She was willing to turn to the darkest of magics - to _blood sacrifice_ \- to quicken the life in the roots of this ancient tree once more. Did you know the word ‘sacrifice’ means ‘to make sacred’? That’s what she was doing, you know - making this holy place sacred and powerful once more.” She glanced sideways at Deaton. “Oh, but another one of the oak-wise stole her hard work. To himself perform the final three sacrifices meant stealing away that power, but not for himself. No, since the sacrifices were not complete, did not end in the deaths of the sacrifices, he handed that power to the sacrifices themselves.”  
  
Finally, she gestured to Scott, who quickly hauled Stiles up onto the table-like surface of the stump. The thinner boy whimpered, and tried to struggle, but his strength had long fled him.  
  
“So as much as I would like to continue to sup on your life’s spark, dear boy, you must serve another purpose. You are my key to this Nemeton’s power. I have consumed much of who and what you are, and once you are dead, your spirit bound forevermore to the Nemeton, I shall become that key myself.”  
  
Finally, she looked down at him, and smiled. He glared up at her in hatred, his cinnamon eyes fever-glazed.  
  
“In return, I shall care well for your friends and loved ones. They shall be —“ In an instant, she disappeared, her form exploding outward into a murder of raucous, angrily-cawing crows as a figure leapt out of the darkness right _through_ the space where she’d been standing just a moment before, claws first. He landed in a roll atop the Nemeton tree and came up, planting his foot in Scott’s chest and heaving outward, sending the surprised McCall boy sailing off the surface. He stopped, snarled at those around him, his eyes gleaming red, and then looked down at Stiles.  
  
Derek.  
  
Suddenly, it was all violence. Even as he watched, Stiles knew what the outcome of this would be. Against one or two of her servants gathered here, Derek might have stood a chance. But against all of them? Rather than watch the inevitable happen, Stiles willed heat - anger - into his cold, unfeeling limbs, and he _moved_. He shimmied sideways, scooting towards the far end of the Nemeton’s stump. Reaching the edge, he slung his legs downward and was about to slump off of it when the stick jammed him back on its surface.  
  
Lydia bit one side of her coral-colored lips, a slightly apologetic wince on her pretty face. “I’m sorry,” she said, and goddamn it, it sounded like she meant it, even though she didn’t let up on the pressure from the old oak branch she held in her hand, forcing him against the wood of the stump.  
  
“You wouldn’t get far enough fast enough, Stiles,” she said, with a shrug of one shoulder. “You’d only hurt yourself trying to get away, and besides…it’s almost over anyway.” She pointed with the stick, and Stiles craned his head around.  
  
Crimson eyes blazing with fury, Scott had both of his claws dug into Derek’s shoulders, forcing him to his knees. Derek’s shirt was a mass of raggedy, bloody tatters, his body beneath red-black in the moonless night. He was breathing with difficulty, and both of the Argent stood nearby, weapons at the ready. From the looks of them, Derek had been pulling his punches, not wanting to injure them. Unfortunately, they had no such reservations.  
  
If he’d had the strength, Stiles would have sobbed. His last hope, literally. Come to nothing.  
  
The darkness _moved_ , and the Lady stepped out of it. She walked a half-circle around him, appraising him with a capricious, delighted look on her face.  
  
“Well…” she mused, almost playfully. She reached over with one night-black talon and lay it aside his jaw, scraping along it as she walked. “Aren’t you a toy? A scion of the ancient Hale clan, unless I miss my guess. You and yours were the guardians of this Nemeton once. I hope you know its history. I’d like to know who is responsible for its desecration, so they can be repaid in kind. That will be the first of many things you tell me in the coming nights, I think. But first…”  
  
Stiles had seen it before. It looked like a kiss. Passionate, intense and burning. The kind of kiss that haunted your dreams, but Stiles knew better. He knew what it meant. Deaton had told him what it was.  
  
 _The kiss of these creatures - the_ leanansidhe _, succubi, whatever you wish to call them - is invasive. Possessive. It is the means by which they reach deep down into someone’s soul and find the emotions that person has attached to their most memorable love-making, and twists it. She writes her name on something that isn’t hers, if you will, lays claim to it. Her victim begins to feel those emotions, directed toward her. Passionate memories of wild sex become the leashes she places on men and women alike; tender memories of deep lovemaking become the shackles she binds them in. It is insidious and can only end in the death of the creature._  
  
With that memory, something sparked in Stiles. He stood, his hands up in surrender. He couldn’t help but feel something an awful lot like hope rekindle in him, but he had to watch. He had to make sure.  
  
Lydia let him rise, and arched a brow as she watched him closely. In a panic, he tried to squelch what he was feeling, to tamp it down beneath the pain and the coldness, but Stiles wore his heart on his sleeve. She looked back at the group assembled on the other side, where Derek, still kneeling, hung half-limp in the Lady’s arms, wholly overcome by her kiss. Stiles watched as Lydia got that look - the one she got when her wheels were turning, and that damned brilliant mind of hers was working through a puzzle or problem.  
  
Crap. She was going to figure it out.  
  
“Sorry about this,” he whispered to her and pushed off the Nemeton, barreling into her like she was an opponent on the lacrosse field. It was more shove than impact, but she shrieked - a surprised, yelping sound - and went down hard. Stiles stumbled, caught himself and stood again. He snatched up the stick Lydia’d been threatening him with and leapt atop the Nemeton stump.  
  
“C’mon, you bastards!” he yelled at the top of his voice. It cracked as he did so, and part of him hated the looks his friends gave him. Resignation. Contempt. Allison even seemed to find it funny.  
  
“Stiles, get down from there,” his father said. He even said it in Dad Voice, and it was everything Stiles could do not to hang his head and do as he was told. “There’s no point to all of this.”  
  
“Your friend is one of mine now, little mortal,” the Lady said, petting Derek on the head as he rose to meekly stand beside her.  
  
“I know you gave him the kiss, you bitch,” Stiles couldn’t help snarling. He threw down the stick in frustration. “That thing that makes people love you the way they love the people they’ve been with. But here’s the thing - Derek? Derek has the worst luck when it comes to women. Both of the ones in recent memory were murderous bitches…and I’m pretty sure Derek’s got some pretty strong feelings about them.”  
  
The last Hale son roared, his eyes a steely blue as he plunged his hand through the Lady’s back, his claws emerging from her front. There was no way to mistake the Chanteuse as mortal, not like this. She shrieked in agony, but there was no blood.  
  
“Iron…cold…iron…” she gasped, as though trying to breathe around the muscled arm that now skewered her.  
  
“Iron filings. Under the fingernails,” Derek said, and ripped his claws out of her with a meaty tearing sound. Her shriek did not stop, but instead rose, higher and higher, as no mortal lungs could ever manage. She fell then, and so did everyone else under her spell. She writhed on the ground, trying to claw her away to an escape.   
  
Derek stomped on her back, pinning her in place, as he fished a small bag out of his coat pocket. Tearing it open with his claws, he scattered the steel-grey dust all over her, and her howling pitched upwards in agony. She began to smoke, flesh blackening until it was the color of the iron filings, and then the whole of her form collapsed like a statue of ash that finally gave way.  
  
Stiles fell to his knees atop the Nemeton, sobbing in relief. Around the glade, the people he loved struggled to their feet, looking around with haunted, confused looks.  
  
It was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry. The threat of the Chanteuse is over, but her effects on everyone are not yet. There's more to the story. :)


	5. A Safe Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the Chanteuse, and sometimes love isn't enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deepest apologies for how long this has taken me to get back to. I'm already halfway through the next chapter though, so hopefully it won't take nearly as long.

Melissa rushed downstairs as the doorbell rang. She crossed to the front door, and opened it. Derek stood there, a carefully neutral expression on his face. He cleared his throat.  
  
“Uh, Deaton said I should come over?”  
  
Melissa nodded. “Thank God, yeah. Come in, please. I appreciate you coming over.” She opened the door for him, and stepped aside, shutting it behind him. He stepped into the entry, and looked around.  
  
“So…what’s going on?”  
  
“It’s Stiles,” Melissa said, glancing up the flight of stairs in front of them, lowering her voice. “He’s in pain, I think. I called Deaton about it, and he says that it’s something to do with that…that woman that hypnotized them or whatever. I’ve got Stiles and his dad here, where I can keep an eye on them along with Scott. It seems like Scott and the Sheriff are recovering pretty well - they’re just really tired and a little groggy. But Stiles is…”  
  
‘’’In pain, yeah,” Derek nodded. As soon as he’d entered the McCall home, he could hear the heartbeats in the house. Two of them at rest, but the other with a frantic timbre to it, the desperate beat of a heart in a body that is not only in pain, but has been for a while. The exhaustion from being so was apparent. Derek looked at Melissa, who was watching him listen curiously. “Werewolves can draw off pain by touch. Why don’t you show me where he’s at, and I’ll see if I can help?”  
  
He was in Scott’s room, sleeping fitfully. Derek could smell the scent of panic and pain in his sweat, and the bedclothes were drenched with it. Derek crossed to his bedside and sat on the floor next to the bed, cross-legged. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the mattress, his hands clasped loosely in front of him, and closed his eyes. He listened for a moment, and inhaled deeply. Pain and panic, in equal measure, their stenches acrid to his lupine senses. It was fresh, but beneath that was also a layer of more of the same, much older. He’d had to be in a terrible mental state to leave something like that around him.  
  
“Can…can you do something for him?” Melissa whispered next to him, clearly loathe to interrupt, but also worried for her son’s best friend. Derek opened his eyes, and nodded to her. Turning back to regard Stiles’ restlessly sleeping form, Derek reached out with his left arm, laying the hand gently over the boy’s temple and top of head. He closed his eyes and _pulled_.  
  
Melissa’s eyes grew wide as she watched the strange black spiderwebbed veins literally crawled up Derek’s hand and arm, as he pulled pain away from the young man. Stiles whimpered, and Melissa reached out to take his hand. The crawl of black pain slowed up Derek’s arm, and then stopped altogether, and the boy simply sighed, the sound that someone who’s been in a great deal of pain makes when it finally stops.  
  
“Handy trick,” Melissa smiled at Derek. “Would be useful in my line of work.”   
  
“Uh, hey…” Stiles rasped as his eyelids fluttered open. “What’s going on?”  
  
“Sorry to wake you,” Derek said, leaning back away from the bedside, but not moving to stand. “Deaton called me and said you were having a rough time of it. Thought I’d stop by and see if I could help.”  
  
“Aww, Sourwolf,” Stiles grinned dopily, his eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. “You do care.”  
  
“Look, this nice lady here is cool enough to take care of the three of you. Least I could do to make sure you’re as little of a pain in the ass to her as possible,” Derek huffed, and winked at Melissa, who chuckled. Stiles reached out and shoved feebly at Derek, who didn’t move an inch.  
  
“You hungry, kiddo? Can I get you something to eat. It’s been a while since you’ve had anything.” Melissa rose quickly, and Stiles nodded, thanking her. “I’ll be right back, then.”  
  
As soon as she was gone, Stiles exhaled and winced. Pain spiked in his scent, and Derek took hold of his hand, clutching it in both of his, and drew away the pain again. He closed his eyes, wincing, as he did so, inhaling and exhaling in careful rhythm. When there was nothing left for him to take, he opened his eyes again, only to find Stiles staring at him expressionlessly, those caramel-colored, long-lashed eyes simply regarding him without comment.  
  
“Thanks,” he finally said, and there was so much under that single word. So much exhaustion, so much stress, so much grief.  
  
“You guys alright in here?”  
  
The Sheriff spoke from the doorway. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt, his hair sleep-mussed. He had dark circles under his eyes, but he was looking better. He was also smiling to see Stiles looking peaceful, the smile of a parent who has seen their kid in too much pain recently.  
  
Derek looked up at the Sheriff and nodded, but his attention was immediately drawn back to Stiles. The young man sat in up in bed, cheerfully greeting his dad, and even making a joke about nicknaming Derek “Morphine” or something similar. His demeanor was casual, his words joking, his movements animated and pleasant.  
  
But Derek scowled as he heard differently. Stiles’ pulse spiked the moment he heard his father’s voice in the doorway, and the sour smell of both fear and anxiety blossomed in the room like mold up a wet wall. The boy’s heartbeat was racing, and Derek could see the micro-stresses in his body posture, the signs of someone on the verge of panic who is doing everything in his ability to fight down the terror.  
  
“Get out,” Derek said, rising. The patter between father and son came to an abrupt stop, and the Sheriff just gawped at the werewolf.  
  
“What?” he barked, indignant. Derek noticed Stiles wince at the sharp question, and pull away, putting his back up against the wall. He groped for the covers and hauled them up himself, looking for all the world like he was about to simply hide beneath them. His heartbeat told a similar story.  
  
“I need you to please leave the room, Sheriff Stilinski,” Derek said, jaw clenched. The scent of near-panic and pain from Stiles was driving his wolf near to howling, and it was everything he could do to keep from just barking an order for the older man to leave. “Stiles is in a lot of pain, and he’s on the verge of a panic attack. Please. Just go.”  
  
The Sheriff glanced down at his son, looking for verification. He clearly intended to get his son’s feedback on all of this nonsense, but then stopped. Stiles wasn’t even in any condition to interact at all, his eyes tightly scrunched shut, his legs drawn up so that he could practically hide behind them. The boy’s hands were trembling, and - as Derek said - he looked like he was barely holding it together.  
  
“He’s right, Mr. Stilinski,” Scott said from the hallway behind him. “Let’s leave them.” With a grip that was kind but allowed for no objection, Scott steered the Sheriff out of the room and into the hall with him, and shut the door to his room, leaving Derek and Stiles alone in the room. Derek quickly sat on the edge of the bed, and reached out to clasp one of Stiles’ hands.   
  
The boy hesitated for a moment, unsure, and then rapidly clasped the hand with both of his. The dam broke, and Stiles began to cry, ugly, body-shaking sobs that looked painful with his effort to keep them quiet. Derek simply let him cling to his hand, drawing away the pain that even now was blossoming in Stiles’ body once again. He could hear Melissa join Scott and the Sheriff in the hallway outside.  
  
“What’s going on?” she asked, baffled to find both her son and the Sheriff standing in the hall, looking sadly at the door.  
  
“Derek just…he said that Stiles was in pain again, and about to have a…I don’t really know,” the older man stammered, looking from Melissa to the door to Scott and back again.  
  
“He was right,” Scott said in a low tone. “It’s what woke me. Stiles’ heartbeat spiked with a lot of fear when you entered the room. It did it again when he realized I was there.”  
  
Melissa and the Sheriff both turned to regard Scott soberly, and Scott looked from one to the other sadly, tears in his deep brown eyes.  
  
“I think we scare him,” he said finally. “I think that…I think that he’s still freaked out from when we were…in her control. What we did…I mean, what she made us do. To him.”  
  
Melissa’s brows rushed together in a worried scowl, and then she looked at the door. A grief-filled realization slowly dawned on her face.  
  
“What…what did you do? I mean, what did she _make_ you do?” The Sheriff paled visibly, and leaned against the bathroom door on the opposite side of the hall, and looked away. He looked sick, deep lines of painful self-loathing cut into his face, making him seem much older than he was. Melissa looked to Scott, who held her gaze, and then looked away.  
  
“I…it was bad, Mom. I don’t really want to go into it right now, please. But it was awful.”  
  
Melissa looked away, then, and let herself shed her own tears. That fucking monster, she snarled inwardly. What kind of damage had she done - not just to Stiles, but to all of them?  
  
All three of them turned as the door to Scott’s room opened quietly, and Derek slipped out.  
  
“Overheard your conversation,” he said, less apologizing and more simply informing. “Though Stiles is pretty much asleep again. Is there any place he can go where…uh…”  
  
“There’s no one who abused him for her?” Scott finished bitterly. The Sheriff made a small strangling sound, and Melissa hugged Scott.  
  
“You can’t think that way,” she said, to both of them. “You’ll go crazy. You weren’t in control of your actions.”  
  
“She’s right,” Derek agreed, and laid a hand on the Sheriff’s shoulder. The older man looked, and they made eye contact. “Let him come over to my place.”  
  
The Sheriff looked like he was about to object, but Derek raised a hand to forestall him. “Look, he’ll be safe at my place. Melissa can stop by to check on him occasionally, and I’ll get Deaton to do that, too. I’m also the only one of us who can deal with his pain that wasn’t taken by that bitch,” he snarled.  
  
“Shouldn’t…shouldn’t he be in a familiar environment?” Scott whispered. His mom hugged him tight again, looked at Derek and then nodded.  
  
“Actually, I think Derek has the right idea,” she said, looking from Scott to the Sheriff, and back again. “It seems like he could use a little distance from what he knows best right now, as painful as that is to think about.”  
  
“I’ll take care of him,” Derek said in a low voice, glancing at the Sheriff in particular.  
  
“Why? You hardly know each other,” the older man asked, running his hands through his hair. Derek wondered if Stiles know that he got that particular gesture of frustration from his dad.  
  
“It’s true. But that didn’t stop him from saving my life. I was paralyzed, and he kept me from drowning for two hours. And this was at a time when our relationship was…rocky, to say the least. So, if it makes you feel better, I owe him. I owe him for a lot of things.”  
  
The Sheriff looked to Scott and then Melissa. Scott couldn’t meet his gaze, blinking rapidly trying to avoid crying, his lower lip trembling with the effort. Melissa hugged her son tight to her, and looked to the Sheriff.  
  
“This is hard to even think about - especially after what you’ve just been through - but I think this is probably best.”  
  
“Alright,” the Sheriff finally said, after mulling it over like doing so caused him pain. “Alright - I just want what’s best for him. Just…make sure you take his pillow.” With that, he shuffled off back to the guest room, closing the door behind him. Scott walked to the door and laid his hand over it sadly. He turned to Derek.  
  
“I know,” Derek whispered. He could hear the older man breaking down weeping, too.  
  
“Let’s do this,” Melissa said. “The sooner we get him set up someplace he can rest, the faster he can recover and put this all behind him, right?”  
  
Derek nodded. “Why don’t you help me move him to my loft, Melissa, and you can make sure he’s settled in.”  
  
“Will you be alright, kiddo?” Melissa asked Scott, who nodded, and hugged her again. When he pulled back from the embrace, he ran his forearm across his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, go. Just take care of him. And Derek?”  
  
“I’ll take good care of him, Scott. I know what he means.” With that, he and Melissa returned to Scott’s room, and Scott lingered for a moment, before returning to his mom’s room to try and get some more rest of his own.  
  
*   *   *  
  
Stiles slept most of the ride over to the industrial part of town where Derek’s loft stood. He groggily let them lead him into the building, and only started to actually waken to his surroundings as the elevator stopped.  
  
“Wha…where the hell?” he murmured as Melissa steered him in the front door of the loft. She smiled and sat him down on the sofa while Derek climbed the spiral staircase to his living space above.  
  
“Hey, Derek has volunteered to look after you. You’re at his place. You going to be alright?”  
  
“I…but wait, what about my dad? And Scott?”  
  
“Listen, I’ll take good care of them. The thing is…” Melissa hesitated. How did she bring up the fact that they knew that he was terrified of both Scott and his father? And probably of everyone else that monster had corrupted as well?   
  
Derek interrupted her, coming back down the staircase. “The thing is that none of the wolves who can draw away your pain is well enough to do it. So I’m stuck with you for a while, spaz.”  
  
Stiles chuckled, and Melissa was flooded with gratitude for the save.  
  
“Oh, man, Sourwolf. You’re going to regret that so bad. I totally snore, and I leave wet towels everywhere.”  
  
“Well, your feet stink, too, but I’ve known that since I first met you.”  
  
“Ugh. You suck, they do not,” he scoffed, and looked around. Derek’s loft was a little…barren, really. “So, am I on this sofa?”  
  
“No, you can have my bed. It’s upstairs if you feel well enough to make the climb.”  
  
Stiles all but leapt up, even if doing so nearly knocked him over, all flailing limbs. Melissa caught him with a grunt, and a suggestion that he be careful.  
  
“Are you kidding? I’ve always wanted to see your little wolfy den up there.”  
  
Derek huffed. “You can’t stay there if you’re going to call it a ‘wolfy den’.” He crossed to Stiles, and looped one of the younger man’s arms around his shoulder, and wrapped his own around his back, supporting him. “I’m serious. I’ll throw you down these stairs.”  
  
Stiles chuckled, and Melissa grudgingly stepped back, letting Derek handle it. She followed close behind as they cautiously climbed the spiral staircase. The space upstairs was about half the size of the main loft, but Derek had used it wisely. It had a counter and small kitchen space on one side, and up on a polished wooden platform stood a large king-sized bed, with a dark blue comforter and a jumble of pillows with mismatched pillowcases. Between the kitchen space and the bedroom stood an open square-topped doorway that led into a tile-floored room with a variety of frosted glass walls - a bathroom, of some kind, no doubt.  
  
Stiles paused at the top of the stairs, and whistled, taking it in. “Dude! Wolfy den is best den!” Derek snarled, and rolled his eyes, and Stiles winked at Melissa, who followed them shaking her head.  
  
Once Stiles was tucked in, with his favorite pillow under his head, Derek sat next to him and pulled away more of his pain. The younger man sighed as the pain left him, and he slipped into sleep once again.  
  
Derek followed Melissa down to the front door.  
  
“Thanks for doing this,” she said again, hesitating at the front door, clearly not wanting to leave him.  
  
Derek shrugged as he fished his keychain out of his pocket. With quick, strong movements, he peeled a key off of it, and presented it to her.  
  
“This is a key to the loft. Come by whenever. Announced or otherwise. I trust you with it, and I want you to not worry about him.”  
  
She scoffed. “I’m a mom. That’s in the job description - especially with that one, who may as well be my second kid.” She took the key and looked into Derek’s eyes. “Just…take good care of him.”  
  
“You have my word,” he said, and opened the door for her. “You can stay a little longer if you like.”  
  
“I should get back to the two at home. I’m going to make some dinner, but I’ll bring some by for the two of you, too, alright? Probably around seven or so?”  
  
“Thanks,” Derek said. “Look forward to it.”  
  
Melissa nodded, then, biting her lower lip, and walked toward the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the healing begin! Thanks for the Kudos, Bookmarks and especially the Comments!


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